


Out of the Ordinary

by cimorene



Category: Project Runway (US) RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-12
Updated: 2009-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-04 09:13:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cimorene/pseuds/cimorene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andraé doesn't remember until halfway through dinner--which Santino peppers alternately with compliments and horrible cheese puns--that he'd even asked a question.</p><p>"If you want me to make this without the cheese next time, keep this up," Andraé warns.</p><p>"Why?" says Santino. "Do you find it grating?"</p><p>"Shut up!" says Andraé, trying not to laugh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Ordinary

The first thing Andraé notices when he comes home is that the music's pretty loud, and everything else is quiet.  The second thing he notices is that the music is Etta James singing "At Last".  Even though it's one of his favourite songs, Andraé's first reaction is mild worry.  The last time he heard "At Last" was the time Santino said that if he never heard it again it would be too soon, and Andraé went in the workroom and turned it up loud enough to hear through the door, and Santino was pissed for days.

Has Santino sustained a head injury?  Have housebreakers with exquisite taste in music broken into the house, left Santino tied up or unconscious, and then settled in to enjoy Andraé's music collection and stereo in their native habitat before removing them? 

Is Santino about to ask for some really big and probably really horrible favour?

Andraé sets down his bag of screen-printing inks, chalk pastels, spray fixative and organic Ecuadorian coffee next to the door and tiptoes around the corner into the kitchen.  No Santino.  No sign of him, other than two dirty glasses and some crumbs on the counter.  The living room?  Empty.  He almost keeps going right past the bedroom, because Santino is sprawled on the floor (normal) but not surrounded by any piles of fabric, nylon cord, hat forms, or sketch paper (definitely not normal).  He's applying zebra print to the cushion of a piano bench with a staple gun.  "Oh, hi, Andraé," he says casually, when Andraé does a double take and stops in the doorway to clear his throat pointedly.

Andraé considers and discards several responses to do with the piano bench, including "We don't have a piano"; "We don't have a piano - do we?"; "That wasn't here this morning"; "Wow, zebra"; and even "That looks nice".  In the end he goes with "There you are.  You look busy."

Santino shrugs and puts his nose right up against the piano bench to put another staple in, humming a few tuneless bars.  "It's coming along," he says, halfway to his Tim-voice, but he doesn't seem to realise he's doing it. 

After Andraé watches the news and deletes a bunch of spam from his email inbox, singing along occasionally with Etta, he wanders back into the kitchen and idly wipes the crumbs off the counter.  "Santino!" he calls.

"Yeah?"

"You want to help me cook dinner?"

It's pleasant and peaceful in the kitchen, if a bit untidy.  The curtains over the sliding door to the patio are pushed back and a long thin rectangle of rich buttery yellow glows on the vinyl floor.  Etta is on "I'd Rather Go Blind" now, long sweet notes trembling in the air, and it would be nice to have some company and conversation while making dinner.

However, Santino thinks it would be more fun to be a jerk.  "Well, it's a tough call," he calls back, "but I think I'll stick with the fabric for now, much as I'd love to slave over a hot stove."

Andraé snorts and rolls his eyes.  "Cold leftovers for you, asshole," he yells, but he puts a pot on to boil for pasta.  "Would you turn that music up?" 

When he's finished with the pasta salad Andraé pads down the hallway to the bedroom again, and this time finds Santino stretched flat on his back under the piano bench doing something mysterious with an exacto knife.  "Dinner's ready," he says from the door, and Santino tips his head up to look at Andraé upside-down and gives him a cheeky smile. 

So Andraé keeps wondering what the deal is with the Etta James stuff, and he can't figure it out:  is Santino up to something or isn't he?  It's like he's devised the perfect mix of ingratiating and exasperating behaviour to drive Andraé completely insane.  At least in _that_ respect there's nothing out of the ordinary about his behaviour tonight.  No sooner has Andraé convinced himself it's all in his head after all (should he give Santino a little more credit?  Maybe he doesn't hate Etta all that much.  Most of the time he does have pretty good taste) than Santino rummages in the cereal cabinet and produces a bottle of Andraé's favourite chardonnay from behind the Rice Krispies.

Aha. "Oh," says Andraé, "an occasion!"

"Yeah," smirks Santino, "because it's really unusual that you get actually drunk on beer." 

All right; maybe he just wants Andraé drunk.  He won't be any more willing that way, but he will get giggly and, if he has enough, extremely cuddly.  Andraé stands on tiptoe to get down a pair of wine stems and passes them to Santino.  "So you _did_ have a goal," he says. Mystery solved?

Santino catches his wrist and kisses the pulse-point, then uses it to reel Andraé in and kiss him until he's warm and tingling and humming happily in the back of his throat.  Okay, the mystery isn't solved quite yet.

Andraé doesn't remember until halfway through dinner--which Santino peppers alternately with compliments and horrible cheese puns--that he'd even asked a question.

"If you want me to make this without the cheese next time, keep this up," Andraé warns.

"Why?" says Santino. "Do you find it grating?"

"Shut up!" says Andraé, trying not to laugh.

"Are you feta up with my cheddaring?"  Just when Andraé is considering whether it would be permissible to kill Santino even though he brought home a bottle of wine, Santino's mood swerves: "Seriously, this is really good.  Don't make it without the cheese.  Why do you have this vegetarian magic?  Why does my pasta salad always turn out like crap?"

Andraé shrugs and takes another bite.  "We can't all be design geniuses like you," he teases.  "Some of us have our talents in other areas." 

Santino makes a face that's halfway between a shy blushing smile and an eye roll, which is funny:  sometimes he'll take a compliment as no more than his due, with that cockiness that sometimes makes people hate him, and sometimes he'll be genuinely taken aback and get a little confused, like he just doesn't know what to do with it.  Andraé still remembers vividly the first time he saw Santino blush.  It's always an occasion, since it happens so infrequently. 

"So what you're trying to say is that I can't cook because I suck," he says once he recovers.

Andraé grins and eats a piece of artichoke heart. 

"No, I get it," Santino continues, warming to his theme, "because you're multi-talented, and can design clothes _and_ make awesome pasta salad--and you can parallel-park perfectly on the first try, and you know the meaning of the word 'tact'--"

"--You don't know the meaning of the word 'tact'?"

"--And you look really good in a pair of tiny little shorts--"  Andraé raises an eyebrow, and Santino smiles at him and leans over to pour him another glass of wine-- "--And you can talk with a British accent, you think you're better than me.  That's okay.  I understand."  His tone is joking, but he's smiling at Andraé so warmly that Andraé puts down his fork and his stomach slowly turns over. 

"Your pasta salad isn't that bad," Andraé says.

Santino laughs like that's the funniest thing he's ever heard. "Don't get cheesy on me, Andraé."

Andraé buries his face in his hands. 

Then he hears Santino say, "Thanks for making dinner."

Andraé sighs and lifts up his head.  "You're welcome," he says. "Thanks for the wine. Now will you tell me what's going on?  Without any references to cheese?"

Santino looks straight at him seriously that way that he does, like Andraé is a lamp that's just slightly too bright and hurts his eyes, or like he's bracing himself in expectation of bad news.  Andraé wants to smooth away the little crease at the corner of his mouth.  He takes a drink of wine instead, and Santino says, "You know your little French accent?"

Andraé frowns so hard he almost forgets to swallow his mouthful of wine. "Do I what? Are you changing the subject?"

"I'm not changing the subject--that little French accent that you did--"

"You mean my Pepe Le Pew?" says Andraé dryly. 

"Yeah, that Pepe Le Pew one.  I'm sorry I made fun of it."

"Oh, you were right," says Andraé, trying because Santino still looks so earnest not to blink sceptically.  "I don't mind; I _don't_ sound particularly French, so whatever."

"But no, that isn't the point, though," Santino breaks in eagerly. "You were doing it a lot and I thought it was funny, but I made a comment about Pepe Le Pew even after you told me not to--"

"But I wasn't--" _serious_, Andraé doesn't say, because Santino is _so_ serious that his gaze keeps jumping away and he's talking in a rush.

"And anyway," Santino rushes on, "I didn't, and then you stopped doing it, at least in front of me, so.  I wanted to apologise, because I didn't want for you to stop."

"You like the Pepe voice?" says Andraé, starting to smile.

"I like _your_ Pepe voice," says Santino, and some of the tension leaves him, and finally he meets Andraé's eyes.  "I noticed when you stopped.  I miss it."  Andraé's smiling more and more, and when he says "You could use it to record the message on the answering machine.  You could recap the news headlines as Pepe every day," Andraé gets up out of his chair and comes around the table. 

"Come here," says Andraé, offering a hand and pulling Santino to his feet.  "Wow, you really like that voice, huh."

"It might be ridiculous and dorky," Santino explains with a little grimace, "but I like you dorky.  I don't want you to stop being dorky." 

The look in his eyes is so completely sincere and unironic and _warm_\--he looks like this at Andraé when they're walking and holding hands, and when Andraé is asleep and just waking up, and when he thinks Andraé doesn't see him watching--that Andraé _has_ to laugh, and he slumps over against Santino's chest and buries his face in his shoulder. 

Santino wraps his arms around Andraé, and he chuckles, but he seems a little confused.

"Santino," Andraé sighs, "you're--incomparable.  You can't even make a stunningly romantic, ridiculously sappy gesture without being an asshole."

Santino just grins at him, which might be because he enjoys being called an asshole, at least by Andraé, or might be because Andraé's thrown his arms around his neck and is standing on tiptoe to kiss him. 

When he does this Santino still has to bend down, even though his arms tighten automatically, pulling Andraé snugly against him, taking some of the weight off his toes; Andraé can feel how long his arms are, wrapped all the way around him even though they're bent almost in half.  Their lips touch, and Santino's mouth is still curved in a smile, soft and warm, damp and flavoured of wine.  He lets Andraé lead, lick his mouth open and chase the flavour back down the length of his tongue. Santino is a sweet kisser, and usually also an aggressive one, but now he just tightens his grip, lifting till Andraé's ribs creak and his toes leave the floor. 

"I'll try and remember to keep being dorky," Andraé breathes. 

Santino snorts and nuzzles his cheek, pressing two kisses in front of his ear where five-o'clock shadow is starting to grow in.  "Yeah," he murmurs.  "Make an effort."  His breath tickles Andraé's ear.

There's a tiny silence and Andraé, relaxed and absorbed in brushing a lingering kiss on the lower point of Santino's collarbone as he is, comes to a realisation: "I've never heard this song before." 

"Yeah," says Santino, "I was looking through some old vinyl on sale, and I thought, well, it'd be dumb not to buy it when I know how much you like her and it was that cheap so..."

Andraé pulls back a little to look at his face.  "You--!"  He stares at Santino, a slow grin spreading across his face, and Santino mumbles:

"It wasn't that romantic of a gesture."

"Shut up," says Andraé, laughing, "and take your reward sex."  He slides his hands up under Santino's shirt and drags him through the doorway to the living room.

"Okay," Santino agrees, and lets Andraé shove him up against the back of the couch.  "It wasn't, though." His mouth is twisted, amused, with a little curl of teasing mischief, and Andraé leans in to kiss the look off, because with Santino sitting on the back of the sofa he can reach.  Santino braces his feet apart and Andraé stands between his thighs and leans into him, letting Santino hold his weight while they kiss, feeling the warm luxury of contact against the whole front of his body, the smooth ridges of Santino's ribs and the dip of spine under his hands, Santino clutching at his hips, cradling the side of his face. 

It's easy to make Santino mutter things like "God, Andraé," but he's usually so quiet Andraé can't make out the syllables; it takes work to make him loud.  And it's hard to make him gasp, but Andraé manages now, working his fly open slowly, one button at a time. While Santino is dazed and unguarded, Andraé pushes his shirt up over his head and then slides his hands slowly back down the long, thin back. 

"Wow," says Santino when he gets his breath.  "Right here on the living room couch--that is special, I must have done something special after all."  He can't fool Andraé, though; he's a little breathless, the way he usually is when he's in the middle of taking Andraé's shirt off, like however he tries, he can't just shrug it off.  His big hands tickle going over Andraé's ribs, and Andraé squirms away and then back into the touch. 

"Or," says Andraé, "maybe it wasn't that special.  I take it back.  It was tired and clichéd and expected; I'm just really horny by some strange coincidence, so would you hurry up and let me take your pants off?"

Santino laughs and puts his hands under the waistband of Andraé's jeans and kisses him again, sweet and determinedly slow and soft, sucking a little on Andraé's lower lip and teasing the corner of Andraé's mouth with his tongue. This is distracting, but not distracting enough to prevent Andraé, when he's determined, from getting rid of Santino's pants. 

They almost end up on the floor, but Santino sort of picks Andraé up and instead they tumble over the back of the sofa and land awkwardly and narrowly miss the corner of the coffee table.  Andraé doesn't stop to worry about that, just pushes Santino down firmly into the cushions and bends over him, tastes Santino's diaphragm and belly and the edge of his ribcage and the tender hollow under his hipbone, nuzzling the crease of his thigh and the long curve of his cock. He strokes Santino's bony knee and ankle with one hand until he needs it to hold Santino down, and sucks until Santino twitches and trembles and finally says _Andraé_ three times so breathlessly it almost sounds new, like he's never said it before, like it's a foreign word he's never even _heard_.  Andraé slides up and stretches out on top of him. 

Santino is eager once he's caught up in the moment, and he's left fingerprint bruises on Andraé's hips before, but it is Andraé who lifts his head from the curve of Santino's neck and seeks his mouth.  The kisses are sloppier now, uncontrolled.  Andraé is remembering little flashes: their first kiss; taking Santino in his arms backstage at Fashion Week; the first graze of his hand on the warm skin of Santino's belly between shirt and belt buckle; the feel of Santino's hand gripping the back of his thigh, tugging him closer--and Andraé arches his back and closes his eyes while climax shakes him. 

Sometime later he realises sleepily that he's left the kitchen window open, because he can feel a breeze teasing his exposed skin--his toes, his thigh, his upper arm.  Despite this he's pleasantly warm and comfortable lying on Santino, and not bruised at all by any jutting hips and elbows (not _this_ time, at least). 

"I'm not the only one who's dorky," Andraé observes. 

Santino chuckles, a deep sound that Andraé can feel rumble in his chest.  "I'm not going to deny it," he says cheerfully.  "I'm a big ol' freak."

"Mmmm," says Andraé, turning his face to talk directly in Santino's ear.  His nose brushes the curls of Santino's hair, the side of his face.  "You freak.  Santino, promise me something."

"Hmm?"

Andraé smiles.  "Don't stop making horrible puns."

[end]


End file.
